Hi folks. If you find the files below particularly useful please consider donating via Paypal to our local non-profit all volunteer animal rescue site Ahimsa Haven. I've been volunteering there since 5/2013 but they've been around much longer than that. We recently opened a newly renovated facility in Templeton MA and were featured in the Gardner News. Every little bit counts. Thanks.

The two histories for Gardner give some limited info on where the "Early Settlers" came from but did not delve further into their past. I tried to do so. Also, there were some blanks for some of the last names of the wives so I tried to fix that, as well. Given that the books dealt with people essentially living in the 1800's, my other goal was to determine what happened to them and find out where their people spread to. I decided to track everyone found in the 1850 census in addition to the original settlers. It was a big but tractable project made possible by the abundance of information now available online through the Familysearch database. I later added the 1870 & 1900 censuses and found that many new names could be included, especially the from Irish immigrant families. The file is now 23.5 MB and has 122,431 people. too big to upload here, unfortunately.

Still, you can review the individual early settlers below. I have listed them in alphabetical order (1878 history is mostly alphabetical). However, I have only listed the heads of the families. Their children & wives can be viewed under their links. It is possible that I have corrected some of the data found in the links below since initially setting up this page.